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Quick Takes, Pandemic Style 2: Electric Boogaloo

1. I got a new car!

I know. You’re wondering how in the hell I did that while in lockdown. Well, my car lease was coming up on expiration and when I initially contacted the dealership about what I was supposed to do about that in the middle of everything being closed, they told me I would need to call corporate leasing and get my lease extended. Okie dokie, no biggie. But that was more than a month before my lease expired. So I waited several weeks and then I called again and said “Hey, anything change or do I need to extend?” Lo and behold, just days before, the Governor had said that car sales could open again with changes in process at the state level to facilitate online transaction thereof.

I used the dealer website to find the car I wanted and reserve it. I filled out a bunch of paperwork online to apply for the new lease and have them do a credit check. They shunted all that over to finance who ran through things and approved me. Then, I did a video chat with one of the finance guys to take care of stuff that had to be signed in front of a notary. The next day they delivered my car TO MY HOUSE. They showed up, I signed a bunch of stuff, they handed over my new keys, and they drove my old lease away.

I now drive a pretty blue Hyundai Santa Fe.

Interestingly, the sales guy told me that in the 6 weeks sales were closed they had over 100 customers call who had completely totaled their cars and needed new vehicles. Since sales were completely shut down across the state the dealership couldn’t help. The best they could offer was to send people to West Virginia to buy a car there. The only problem with that is you only have 30 days to register that new vehicle with the state and THAT was all shut down, too. So these poor people were renting cars long term because they had no other choice. It’s stuff like this that I didn’t even think about when the shut down orders went into effect. Things ripple out in a thousand ways.

2. On a side note, I still need to renew my driver’s license. All the centers are closed, I’m due to get a RealID so I have to physically go to the DMV, and my license expired April 30th. They’ve issued blanket extensions on that so I’m OK to drive but it’s sort of that last little chore I still need to do that’s itching at me. I need to spend some time gathering all the appropriate documents for RealID so that I have them all together and can grab and go when things open up again.

3. I’m not one of those people who are barking about how you’re lazy if you don’t come out of isolation with a new skill. Oh, a new skill, you say? How about I LEARNED HOW TO STAY ALIVE IN A PANDEMIC. Ahem. Anyway, that said, I picked up Duolingo again. I started trying to learn Swedish a couple of years ago but then things started getting crazy with the divorce heating up, working two jobs, having a relationship, and raising kids. I just didn’t have the bandwidth. But we’re sitting around a lot lately so I opened it back up again and I’m spending maybe 10-15 min a day on it. I can now successfully communicate to a Swedish speaker that I do not eat turtles and that spiders don’t drink beer. Handy phrases, those.

4. The Governor finally got wise on the liquor issue. A couple of weeks after opening up the website that no one could actually get on to, they finally figured out that wasn’t cutting the mustard. They began by designating 100 state stores across the state as curbside pick up locations. You had to call the store, order from whatever stock they had in store, your limit was 6 bottles, and then they’d give you a pick up window – usually the next day.

That lasted all of about a week because those 100 stores got slammed (of COURSE they did). The state then expanded curbside pick up at state stores to most locations across the state. So the website is still open and the stores have curbside pick up. Your limit is still six bottles and they’re only selling 750 ml bottles as far as I’ve been able to tell but liquor is finally back on the menu in Pennsylvania. Skål!

5. I still hate homeschooling. I know, I see your shocked face. We’ve got about 4 weeks to go with this and I’m increasingly hitting “FUCK IT” levels of not caring. Jamie is crying over band lesson? Fuck it. I don’t care. Log off the lesson. Their version of “concert” is voluntary during this time and we’re not volunteering. Liam has another ridiculous assignment from the gym teacher? Fuck it. Here’s my signature that he did it. Get a grip, teacher. We have yet another useless Zoom call for Jamie in which no instruction is occurring and he’s not interested in socializing over a screen for 45 minutes at lunch time? Fuck it. Skip it.

I honestly do not know how I am going to handle this if we don’t go back to the buildings in the fall. I’m barely keeping it together right now.

6. All of my people remain healthy. My job is still finding work for me to do. We have enough food, TP, and other essentials for the time being. Gas is cheap. I successfully gave Jamie a haircut without butchering it too badly. The days are getting longer and the weather is getting warmer. May the 4th Be With You!

Six Weeks In

We’ve been in lock down for six weeks and it’s suddenly the beginning of May. So where do we stand?

Unfortunately, we really are not much better off than we were 6 weeks ago. Testing remains a frustrating pipe dream and cases are continuing to rise. As of today there are over 62,000 people dead from this disease. The guy in the Oval continues to lack any kind of coordinated response to this so it’s only getting worse. I can’t believe I have to document this but he has even suggested that we inject disinfectant into our bodies in order to kill the virus in “under a minute.” Lysol literally had to tweet to please not ingest their product in any fashion and emergency response lines across the country got calls from people asking if they could safely do this. And yet people will defend him and say “watch the video, that’s not what he said, he was talking about [insert obscure medical procedure that Trump has no knowledge of].” For the record, I did watch the video. He wasn’t kidding, he wasn’t being sarcastic – he was dead serious and it was fucked up.

And yes, that’s what he claimed. He claimed that he was being “sarcastic” to see what the media would do. That’s a lie, let’s just start there. But EVEN IF you were to suppose that he WAS being sarcastic, how is that at all helpful at a time like this? How does that display leadership or care for this country? How does that calm scared people at a time when accurate information is our best tool? It’s not funny. It’s dangerous.

In other news, some states are beginning to reopen. Georgia did it first and their cases never stopped rising. The Governor there basically said hair salons, bowling alleys, nail salons, etc could reopen. So. What that means is that if the business refuses to reopen they lose state aid because well, they COULD be doing business. If they do reopen and their workers refuse to return, those workers lose UI benefits. It’s all a ploy to get the state out of paying money they likely don’t have and it is disproportionately affecting people of color. On the day that the state began to reopen, 1000 new cases in the state were reported.

Pennsylvania is beginning a staged reopening plan. We are remaining on a statewide shelter-in-place order until May 8th. Then, a block of counties in northwest/north central part of the state will be reopening on a limited basis. Stay at home will be lifted in those counties and retail and daycare may reopen but gyms, barber shops, nail salons, casinos, theaters, and similar will remain closed. The counties chosen have a low rate of infection. The remaining counties, including mine, will remain on strict shelter-in-place – the same thing we’ve been doing for 6 weeks. When the data tells us it’s safe to begin to reopen they will allow us to go back to our lives.

I’m terrified of this. I can’t lie.

Meanwhile, out Michigan way, armed protesters stormed the state house in Lansing and screamed to be let onto the state floor where debate was occurring. Yes, armed. They carried assault weapons with them. (And don’t get snotty with me on definitions. I’m not dumb, ok? They brought weapons of war to the State House. The end.) They screamed in the faces of the Sergeants-At-Arms. 1) If they were black, they’d be dead. 2) That is an armed insurrection. One dingbat dropping his weapon and having it accidentally fire and you end up with civil war. Their issue, you ask? They don’t like being told to stay home and they want the Governor to open the state and let people die. And before you dismiss them as lunatic fringe (they are), please remember that lunatic fringe has done WHOPPING loads of harm throughout history and the recent past is no different. They scream bloody murder that the government has no right to tell them what to do with their bodies. I assume that’s as long as you’re not a woman pregnant with an unwanted baby.

Things are basically falling to pieces here. I’m not scared when I walk out my door so much as scared of the greater whole. I’m scared of what is going to happen next – or more accurately, what is NOT going to happen. I feel entirely powerless to change anything. I obey the orders. I stay home. I wear a mask when I need to leave my house. I follow appropriate precautions. But none of that is making any difference and we still have that excrescence of a President.

I was thinking yesterday about how April was so slow and so fast all at once. On April 1st, the end of the month and the end of lock down seemed so far away. We got to April 30th and I looked around and thought “how the fuck did that happen?!” What I concluded is that we started April thinking we had a chance to get this under control and now we’re here at the end and we’ve improved nothing. We look around and think “well, still in this exact spot.” No wonder it seems like time both dragged and flew past. Nothing changed to make it feel like it was progressing.

States around the country are starting to make noises about the students not going back to buildings in the fall because it won’t be safe even then. I become a deer in the headlights when I contemplate this. Jamie begins middle school in the fall. That transition is hard at the best of times and he is already having weekly meltdowns over 5th grade work that is largely busy work. There’s very little new material being dealt with. Starting him into middle school remotely makes me want to heave. We can’t go back to buildings if we don’t have widespread testing and possibly a vaccine. I’m convinced at this point that we will never be testing appropriately and the vaccine is still at least a year away. I just don’t even know what to do with the helplessness I feel in the face of things I can’t change or control.

We aren’t even close to the end of this thing and there’s no telling in what ways this is all going to get worse. But at this point I’m pretty certain that it will get worse before it’s better.

The One Where I Get Political

The title is fair warning. If you don’t want to read political stuff, skip right on over.

I’d been rolling thoughts around in my head about the federal response to this pandemic and I hadn’t really gotten around to writing this because my thoughts hadn’t coalesced. Then, the White House issued it’s plan for reopening America.

The rage focused my thoughts a wee bit.

Let’s just start out with the fact – and it is a fact whether you like it or not – that Trump has failed on nearly every single level when it comes to this pandemic. He sent off 17 tons worth of equipment and PPE from the strategic reserves even after he’d been fully briefed on what was about to befall us. He waited and waited and waited before even acknowledging that we have a problem. He has withdrawn $400 million in funding from the World Health Organization IN THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC. He is using FEMA and DHS to seize shipments of PPE to states – and no one knows where those seized shipments are going. We have no national shelter-in-place order. He has sent less aid to states whose Governors don’t sufficiently kiss his ass. He fired the people responsible for the oversight of the 2 trillion dollar stimulus bill so that big corporations could get bailout money meant for small business. He lies over and over in press conferences.

Now they’ve released their “phased plan” to reopen America and the bald fact is that it means states are now on their own. Ramping up testing and contact tracing? State responsibility. Hospital capacity expansion and provision of PPE? State responsibility. Mitigation of outbreak or rebound? State responsibility. So they feel just fine using federal agencies to seize what states need to make this happen and feel zero responsibility to help states in any meaningful way.

What the White House has done is to say that they don’t care to lead, they don’t care to help, and they don’t care to be part of any solution. As far as they are concerned, a pandemic is none of their purview. It’s up to the states to figure this out and the Feds are just there to, I don’t know, look pretty?

Today the death toll from COVID-19 in the United States surpassed 40,000. FORTY. THOUSAND. Trump is up there at the White House podium telling us that 100,000 dead is a victory. A victory!

WHAT. THE ACTUAL. FUCK.

Exactly 2 people died from Ebola in the US and Trump called for Obama to resign. Exactly 4 people died in Benghazi and Hillary Clinton testified for 11 hours straight. We lost 3,000 people in the 9/11 attacks and this country still mourns. But 100,000 dead men, women, and children is suddenly an acceptable price to pay if it means we get to open up the economy. Don’t even get me started on that fucking quack Dr. Oz and his statements on how reopening schools with a 2-3% death rate of CHILDREN is an acceptable outcome if it means we can all go back to the fucking mall.

But with Jacksonville reopening their beaches and protesters rallying without obeying social distancing and masking guidelines, we are about to see an explosion of cases. A death toll of 100,000 is going to be a pipe dream. It will be much, much worse.

The only conclusion I am left with is that late-stage Capitalism has become end-stage Capitalism and the only question that remains is how many people are going to die before this country fractures. States are forming regional compacts to coordinate reopening and if you think that isn’t the beginning of Panem style Hunger Games districts, I have some swampland in Florida to sell you.

We are being hung out to dry by the very person who is supposed to lead us. I don’t even know how I have rage to give this anymore because it’s been three years of this never-ending river of shit and the only thing we know now that we didn’t know then is that there is no bottom to this and there is no check on the despot in the Oval.

If I believed in god, I’d beg the deity to save us from the mess. As it is, I can only the hope alien lizard overlords swoop in soon because there’s no saving ourselves from this madman.

 

Quick Takes, Pandemic Style

Greetings from week five of Social Distancing and Isolation!

We’re all mad here.

In this edition of “Cari attempts to resurrect her defunct blog” I’m putting together random quick thoughts. Let’s all find out together how many there will be.

1.  Home schooling is the PITS. I hate trying to pay attention to my own work whilst also answering questions, playing IT professional, and acting as resident therapist for my kids. We’ve had tears and breakdowns. We’ve had mandatory Google Meet band lessons that were unmitigated disasters – why OH WHY does 5th grade band think that introducing new music is a GOOD idea right now?! We’ve had missed assignments and asinine requirements from teachers who think GPS tracking my kid is the only way to prove he did the work. (It’s GYM CLASS. Simmah down there, hoss.) I do, of course, recognize that the teachers and administration are doing their best in an unprecedented situation. We are all just hanging on to our butts and hoping for the best. Some days, though, “best” is defined as “NO ONE CRIED TODAY.”

2. Related to topic one, last week Governor Wolf finally announced what I’d been bracing myself to hear for two weeks – schools are closed for the remainder of the year. Remote learning is the new norm. Seniors to graduate; all others to move up. I’m mostly sad about this because I can see my kids struggling with the fact that school no longer has any kind of social aspect to it. All work and no play and all that. But, the district has announced they’re finalizing a plan to move to a pass/fail grading system for the fourth quarter of the school year and I’m hoping that’s going to take some stress off the kids. Trying to maintain their grades in the face of all this has been draining.

3. Continuing on that topic,  SWEET FANCY MOSES, some of the Moms in the school district need to unbunch their panties from their butt cracks. They heard about pass/fail and flipped out. MY GOD, THIS IS SO UNFAIR TO THEIR CHILD WHO HAS WORKED HARD TO KEEP UP. The general gist being that, if your kid is struggling, they’re just LAZY and don’t deserve to have “the playing field leveled” in their favor. The local universities are doing pass/fail on an opt-in basis, meaning students can choose pass/fail or a straight grade, and BY GOD, we should do the same! Of course, we’re not a university and shouldn’t act like one but don’t let that keep you from going off, Karen. I will say that quite a number of other mothers voiced support of the plan and those that felt their precious snowflake was getting the shaft quite neatly had their asses handed to them.

4. The one decision that the Governor has made that was completely bass ackward is that he closed down the liquor stores in the state. Let me give some quick background – PA is the next best thing to living Prohibition times. When I moved here 20 years ago, beer was available at beer distributors by the case. You could buy a six pack at a ridiculous mark up at a bar. Wine and liquor were only available at the state stores. END OF STORY. Over the last 20 years the rules have relaxed a bit. You can get a selection of beer and wine in some grocery stores but you must pay for it separately from the rest of your grocery order at a special check out. Breweries have exploded and so being able to buy growlers and such right from the source became a thing. We have a number of local distilleries, too, and you can buy from them direct but their product, while good, is expensive. However, most liquor and wide selections of wine as well as cordials like vermouth are still only available at the state stores. Which are now closed. Beer distributors are still open because they are not state owned and are actually classified as “convenience stores” so they slipped through the shut down orders. But if you want booze you are shit out of luck.

Neighboring states – NY, MD, DE, OH, WV – have now all closed their borders to PA residents who try to buy booze. Cops are pulling over PA plates at the border to find out where you’re going and what you’re doing. Liquor stores have been told not to sell to anyone with an out of state ID. And still, we cannot get booze.

So they decided, after having the stores closed for 2.5 weeks, to open up the website associated with the state stores and allow online purchasing and shipping. Can you guess what happened when 12.5 million alcohol starved isolated homeschooling PA residents tried to buy liquor? I’m sure you can.

The website is now metered. They fill only a certain number of orders per day and it’s a crapshoot whether they let you on to order or not. I’ve tried literally hundreds of time (I refresh it multiple times throughout the day) and I’ve had no joy.

So. Isolation is about get real cozy with beer. And the grocery store offerings of wine are going to be picked over so enjoy the cheap stuff, Cari!

5. Then there’s all the scary stuff happening. I read today that we’re on the verge of a meat shortage in this country because of the way COVID is hitting meat packing plants. Trump said today that “when somebody is President of the United States, the authority is total.” He said this in reference to overruling governors on state shelter-in-place orders. He’s becoming more authoritarian and more unhinged by the day and he just plain scares me. There’s rumblings that we’re looking at a vaccine taking at least a year and we don’t even know if immunity from catching this shitty virus is strong enough to prevent reinfection. I saw that at least one east coast University is considering not having students return to campus until January of 2021. Meanwhile, all the government wants to do is send me a measly $1200 check and pat me on the head then turn around give millions to their corporate buddies like the airlines and gas and oil folks. THEN, they use FEMA to seize shipments of PPE to states and hospitals so that the Feds can turn around and line their own pockets by auctioning it to the highest bidder. Millions are going to die and I’m terrified. I keep looking around at the people I care about and wondering which one I’m going to lose. Or will it be me instead? I should probably have a will, huh?

6. Let’s close on some good stuff. I still have my job and have work to keep me busy for the foreseeable future. I’m still able to make rent and pay my other bills and feed my children and myself. NO ONE I LOVE IS SICK. I’m dating a person whose mere presence lowers my stress level and keeps me going. The spring flowers are blooming. I have an 18 pack of toilet paper.

Entry one, Coronavirus Diaries, complete.

Clearing Out The Cobwebs

*tap tap tap* Is this thing on?

It’s been a minute since I posted. Life got in the way. And now we’re in the middle of a pandemic and I suddenly feel the need to reach out. But we’ll get back to that.

Let’s sum up the last four years quickly: I went through an ugly and contentious divorce, I moved twice, I sold a house, I ended up living on the same street as my ex, I have a full time job, I have 50/50 custody of the boys, and I’m dating a man who makes me deliriously happy.

The details of all that would probably make your hair turn white if I ever shared them but this isn’t the forum or the time and frankly, it’s all water under the bridge at this point. There’s nothing to be gained in rehashing. We have settled into some semblance of normality with regard to what being a divorced family looks like for us and we’re just trying to make it work day to day.

Liam is now 15 and a freshman in high school. Jamie is 11 and a 5th grader. Middle school next year. I think they’re both pretty fucking fantastic.

Now, back to this pandemic thing. Whew.

I have worked full time from home for three years for a company you definitely know the name of if you live in the region. It’s been mostly ok to good and the working from home part has given me some real flexibility when I needed it. So when everything shut down it was business as usual for me.

Except now my kids are home all the time and I get to be their part time teacher. At least during the summers I wasn’t trying to facilitate school work, too. For the most part, they’re pretty good about being self-directed but I’m still doing a lot of “what do you have today? What is due? Did you get X assignment done? Let’s email the teacher.” kind of stuff. Also, I hated fractions in elementary school and SURPRISE! I still hate them now.

While it would seem like not a big deal to be juggling all this because working from home is old hat for me, the fact is my focus is SHOT. I might be used to sitting at my computer all day and having good habits instilled for boundaries between work and life, but that does not help when I can’t stop looking at the trainwreck occurring in slow motion all around me. Add in having to stop what I’m doing and help a kid with school at random intervals and I’m lucky I have any productivity at all.

Also, have I mentioned that I’m keeping everyone I love alive through the power of my mind? Yeah, there’s that, too.

I know I’m not the only one dealing with all of this. I know I’m lucky to still have my job at all, for fuck’s sake. I don’t know how any of us are doing this and staying even the tiniest bit sane.

I’ve had online happy hours with friends for the last two weeks and it’s been great to be able to interact with people that way but it’s Week 3 of isolation and I’m starting to really get antsy now. My day to day routine hasn’t changed much from before all this started, and I’m certainly MORE busy than I was before just trying to keep all the balls a’jugglin’, but I am starting to tire of the same four walls, the same indoor activities, the same foods I stocked, the same EVERYTHING. And yet holy SHIT do I not want to go anywhere near a pubic space right now. A park for a walk? Sure that’s allowed. But there’s 80 bajillion other people there and none of them seem to know what the fuck 6 feet looks like. My neighborhood is dense and you can’t step a toe out of doors without finding SOMEONE out there walking their dog for the 50th time that day and no, they don’t know what 6 feet is either. Go away. Go home. Take your germs with you. Keep away from me and mine.

I have a few thousand thoughts about how all this is playing out in this country, the complete lack of a federal response or plan, and how terrified all that makes me but let’s save that for future posts.

Hello from isolation. How YOU doin’?